North Side mission holds plenty of hope for former homeless man

Nate Phillips pours bowls of cereal before the start of the breakfast service on Wednesday July 3, 2013, in the Light of Life Rescue Mission in the North Side.

James Knox

Nate Phillips clears plates and refills juice pitchers on Wednesday during the breakfast service on Wednesday, July 3, 2013, at Light of Life Rescue Mission in the North Side. Phillips lived under the Ninth Street Bridge for three years before receiving help from the organization.

We are currently undergoing updates to our site and are working to improve your experience on all devices that you use throughout your day. If you should find a page or a story that is not working correctly, please click here.

Thank you for your patience,

TribLIVE.com Team

As homeless men filed into the dining room at Light of Life Rescue Mission in the North Side, Nate Phillips greeted them at the door.

That morning, Phillips, 34, had scooped cereal into Styrofoam bowls for the men. He poured orange juice into pitchers and set gallons of milk on the table. Before they sat down to eat, he asked if someone would say grace.

“Most of them I can relate to,” Phillips said. “I know how it is to get up out of that chair and dining room and walk out the door, and you don't know what's going on.

“You don't have a plan in your life. You're just going from wherever to wherever, if it's back to sleep under the bridge or if it's to the library to sit there until it opens up.”

That was his life for the three years he lived under the Ninth Street Bridge at Anderson and Lacock streets, sleeping on cardboard and picking cigarette butts out of trash cans as he wandered Downtown.

“I thought I would try to get a new life,” Phillips said. “But I didn't know my life would be under a bridge.”

PennDOT, which owns the property beneath the Ninth Street Bridge, and the city of Pittsburgh this weekend plan to clear homeless camps where Phillips lived. State and city officials on Tuesday gave the homeless five days to move out of the camps, said PennDOT spokesman Steve Cowan.

PennDOT crews will erect fences to keep people from returning, Cowan said.

The homeless are trespassing and they start fires and generate a large of amount of garbage, presenting public safety concerns, Cowan said. The bridge area is an active construction zone, where PennDOT does not want people living.

Light of Life helped Phillips change his way of living about 10 months ago, when he asked for help. He moved into a room at the East North Avenue mission and enrolled in its job and recovery programs. He attends meetings daily to cope with drug and alcohol addictions. Counseling helped him understand relationships.

“This place just gave me a lot of hope and a lot of strength,” Phillips said.

Such achievement is not rare, but it is difficult for homeless people to make, experts say.

About 1,700 men, women and children come through Light of Life's doors each year, said Kate Wadsworth, public relations manager for the mission.

Last year, only 31 people graduated from its programs, Wadsworth said, noting that some people do not graduate but do stay off the streets after learning to live independently.

“People have to be ready for it,” said Chuck Keenan, an administrator with the Bureau of Homeless Services at the Allegheny County Department of Human Services. “They have to be ready to leave the lifestyle they had on the street.”

In the past five years or so, organizations in the county have moved hundreds of homeless people into housing programs, Keenan said. When officials and volunteers attempted to count Allegheny County's homeless population in January, they found 91 people living on streets and 1,413 people who met the federal definition of homelessness — either living without shelter, staying in a rescue mission or enrolled in a housing program, Keenan said.

As Phillips serves breakfast at the mission — part of his responsibilities there — he recognizes some of the men coming in. He knows their pain.

“To the people that are struggling and homeless, I'm praying for all of you,” Phillips said, reading from a small note he pulled out of the pocket of his shorts. “God loves you and so do I.”

Aaron Aupperlee is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. He can be reached at 412-320-7986 or aaupperlee@tribweb.com.

You are solely responsible for your comments and by using TribLive.com you agree to our
Terms of Service.

We moderate comments. Our goal is to provide substantive commentary for a general readership. By screening submissions, we provide a space where readers can share intelligent and informed commentary that enhances the quality of our news and information.

While most comments will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive, moderating decisions are subjective. We will make them as carefully and consistently as we can. Because of the volume of reader comments, we cannot review individual moderation decisions with readers.

We value thoughtful comments representing a range of views that make their point quickly and politely. We make an effort to protect discussions from repeated comments either by the same reader or different readers

We follow the same standards for taste as the daily newspaper. A few things we won't tolerate: personal attacks, obscenity, vulgarity, profanity (including expletives and letters followed by dashes), commercial promotion, impersonations, incoherence, proselytizing and SHOUTING. Don't include URLs to Web sites.

We do not edit comments. They are either approved or deleted. We reserve the right to edit a comment that is quoted or excerpted in an article. In this case, we may fix spelling and punctuation.

We welcome strong opinions and criticism of our work, but we don't want comments to become bogged down with discussions of our policies and we will moderate accordingly.

We appreciate it when readers and people quoted in articles or blog posts point out errors of fact or emphasis and will investigate all assertions. But these suggestions should be sent
via e-mail. To avoid distracting other readers, we won't publish comments that suggest a correction. Instead, corrections will be made in a blog post or in an article.